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Canada’s Environment Minister says that while a newly released report on climate change raises international implications, it also has relevant impacts within Canada.
Jonathan Wilkinson was referring Monday to the impact of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which finds that climate change is proceeding at a faster pace and producing widespread effects that are more definitively tied to human influence than ever before.
“The wide-ranging IPCC report has unquestionable international implications. But it also matters here at home. Canada is warming at nearly twice the global rate,” Mr. Wilkinson said in a statement.
“Parts of Western and Northern Canada are warming at three times the global average. Scientists have made a clear link between climate change and more frequent and powerful weather events, including heat waves, wildfires, flooding and sea ice loss.”
Mr. Wilkinson said he expects the report’s findings will influence talks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties—COP26—in November.
“The report makes clear that we find ourselves at a critical time for international climate action. The science shows it is vital that countries do more to address climate change, maintaining their pursuit of the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and doing so on a faster timeline.”
Globe and Mail Science Reporter Ivan Semeniuk reports here on the newly released report.
Asked about the report, Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole said, during a visit to Belleville, Ont., that climate change is a very important and urgent threat to Canada and the world.
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“It’s important to our team, not just as members of Parliament and members of Parliament to be, but as parents,” he said.
He noted that a Conservative government will meet targets under the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change for cutting emissions, but also engineer an economic recovery.
In a statement, NDP climate-change critic Laurel Collins said the report confirms the government is not doing enough to address the climate crisis.
“This crisis is undeniably caused by human action and it’s going to take bold action and political courage to solve the problem,” she said.
TODAY’S HEADLINES
SANCTIONS ON BELARUS - Canada, acting with the United States and Britain, imposed new sanctions on Belarus on Monday to protest against what it called gross violations of human rights under President Alexander Lukashenko.
MANITOBA AND OTTAWA AGREE ON CHILD CARE - Manitoba is signing on to the federal government’s plan to implement $10-a-day child care for families by 2023, with Ottawa committing $1.2-billion to Manitoba over the next five years. Monday’s announcement is the seventh such announcement with a province.
NEW CALL FOR CATHOLIC CHURCH SCRUTINY - Indigenous leaders are calling for a re-examination of the Catholic Church’s commitments under the residential schools settlement agreement after a Globe and Mail investigation found billions of dollars in assets for the combined entities of the church in Canada.
WILSON-RAYBOULD SPEAKS OUT - Ahead of the September publication of her new book “Indian” in the Cabinet, former federal justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould talks to The Globe and Mail’s Campbell Clark about her experience in federal politics. Q&A here.
BILL DAVIS - 1929-2021
Former Ontario premier Bill Davis, once the steady hand at the wheel of the province’s Big Blue Machine, died Sunday at the age of 92. An inscrutable man with bland, boring politics, Ontario’s Tory premier, who guided the province through turbulent times with a simple mantra: ‘Bland works’ A Globe and Mail obituary is here.
Former Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae remembers Bill Davis here.
Steve Paikin, author of the 2016 biography Bill Davis: Nation Builder, and Not So Bland After All, writes on the life and politics of the late premier here.
THE LOOMING ELECTION:
Three Liberal MPS -- Adam Vaughan, Karen McCrimmon and Will Amos - have just announced they are not seeking re-election in the looming vote. Story, from CBC, here.
PRIME MINISTER’S DAY
“Personal” according to the advisory issued by the Prime Minister’s Office.
LEADERS
Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Fran？ois Blanchet - No schedule provided by Mr. Blanchet’s office.
Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole makes an announcement in Belleville, Ont.
Green Party of Canada Leader Annamie Paul - No schedule provided by Ms. Paul’s office.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh holds a media availability in Bathurst, N.B. Later in the day he holds a “meet and greet” session in Charlottetown, P.E.I.
OPINION
Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s big break in his 2021 election campaign may have already come: “The big break for Justin Trudeau’s 2021 election campaign may have already happened – with the evidence on display just last week, as the Prime Minister stood next to Quebec Premier Fran？ois Legault... There was Quebec’s nationalist Premier, once a Parti Québécois cabinet minister, thanking the Liberal Prime Minister – a Trudeau, no less – for a new federal-provincial social program. And for doing federal-provincial relations right.”
David Parkinson (The Globe and Mail) on how Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole’s anti-trade, anti-business stand is at odds with his own party’s history: “No, the last government that was unapologetically pro-business, that placed the expansion of trade agreements at the core of its economic and foreign policy, was the last Conservative government. Mr. O’Toole is bashing away at the foundations of an economic strategy designed and built by Stephen Harper, the most revered figure in his own party.”
Walter Dorn and Peggy Mason (Contributors to The Globe and Mail) on how Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has defaulted on Canada’s peacekeeping promises: “Even more promising, at the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial in London in 2016, Mr. Sajjan pledged that Canada would provide as many as 600 military personnel for UN peacekeeping. He hosted the next ministerial in Vancouver in 2017, and Canada bolstered its initial pledge with the promise to provide a quick reaction force, or QRF, to the United Nations. But waiting for the QRF has been like waiting for Godot. Nothing has materialized. Worse, within months of the Vancouver meeting, Canada’s contribution to peacekeeping fell to a historic low of just 19 military personnel – not the envisioned 600. Not since Lester B. Pearson proposed the first peacekeeping force in 1956 had Canada’s contribution been lower.”
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